The Model-Based Archaeology of Socionatural Systems
Edited by Timothy A. Kohler and Sander van der Leeuw
How should archaeologists and other social scientists tackle the big and little questions about change in socionatural systems? Although fieldwork is certainly the place to start, it alone is not enough to answer troublesome "how" or "why" questions. To make sense of what they find in the field, archaeologists build models — possible explanations for the data. This book is about new developments in applying dynamic models for understanding relatively small-scale human systems and the environments they inhabit and alter.
Beginning with a complex systems approach, the authors develop a "model-based archaeology" that uses specific, generally quantitative models providing partial descriptions of socionatural systems of interest that are then examined against those systems. Taken together, the chapters in this volume constitute an argument for a new way of thinking about how archaeology is, and should be, conducted.
Bio
Sander van der Leeuw is a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. He specializes in the long-term impacts of human activity on the landscape, and he is recognized as a pioneer in the application of the complex adaptive systems approach to socio-environmental challenges.
Praise for this book
This will be the book on the simulations of past social systems. The various chapters divide into exploratory efforts and incredibly detailed paleoenvironmental and social systems ... These studies involve the intimate participation of archaeologists, hydrologists, soil scientists, paleoclimatologists, evolutionary biologists and computer modelers.
George Gumerman Santa Fe Institute
The introductory chapter ... provides an exceptionally clear and concise discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of this volume ... When coupled with the introductory chapter, the subsequent case studies make significant methodological contributions to the study of complexity and human-environment dynamics."
Journal of Anthropological Research
